Stories

The Championship

BREAKFAST! That was the first word I heard on the morning of the 2016 Kentucky Bluegrass Lacrosse Tournament. I was ready for this day, my whole team was. We had been practicing for weeks to get ready for this big tournament. Every practice we were working harder and harder and getting better and better for this moment. I knew in my heart that if we lost it would be okay, and that we would needed to work harder, but I told myself that we could win this thing! I excitedly got up and got dressed for my tournament. I headed down the stairs to the kitchen and could smell the pancakes my mom was making for me. After I finished eating, I got all of my lacrosse gear together. It was finally time to go so my dad and I headed out the door to go to the tournament.

My mom shouted, “ Good luck.”

It was about a twenty minute car ride to get to the fields. My dad started to blare music to pump me up for my games. We then pulled up to the parking lot and my dad had to pay ten dollars to park. After we parked I grabbed my bag and stick and walked to our team tent. I could hear the loud whistles that were starting and stopping games. I could smell all the food tents grilling hamburgers and hot dogs. I was excited,but determined to stay focused. We got to our tent but not all of my teammates were there yet so we had to wait for them before we could start our pre-game warmup. A lot of teams were walking by our tent in our age division. Some of the teams were big and starred us down but they didn’t intimidate me. I felt really confident that we had put in the work to win this thing. Once our whole team arrived we began to warm up. We did the things that we had worked on in practice during the games and it worked. The whole team played great and won all of our games to make it into the championship. We went back to the tent for a two hour wait until game time. Our coaches made us stay at the tent and drink a lot of water.

My head coach yelled, “ You need to hydrate boys, I don't wanna see anyone passing out on that field.”

Then it was game time so I got suited up and stretched. The coach reminded us to do the things we worked on and that we have to play as team. It takes the entire team to win championships no one can do it alone. Abe Williams, Jack Phelps and I were captains for the game. I called heads and we won the toss so I told them what side we wanted. I scored the first goal of the game to put us on the board. The other team scored quickly and it went back and forth the whole game. It turns out that this team was not only BIG they were really good. With two minutes to go I scored my fourth goal to tie the game up seven to seven. With 30 seconds left in the game they scored to go up by one. Since we played on a running clock we never even got a chance to face off again and ended up losing the championship game. The final score was eight to seven. I could tell our coaches were frustrated. They knew we should have won that game and so did we.

They talked about how we succeeded when we did what we practiced and worked as a team. But when we broke down as a team is when they took advantage. In the end our coach said “You win some and you lose some but you can’t win them all you can only learn from it.”